1. Is this an accurate depiction of the African American experience during Reconstruction? Why/ Why not?

3.  By 1900 the buffalo herds were virtually wiped out.  By 1900 the West was mostly fenced and homesteads were established.  Railroads crossed the West and large towns grew up around the rails.  By 1900 most of the western lands had been divided into States.

5.  The California Gold Rush (1849) started a flood of miners to the West. They frenzied search continued well in to the 1890s.  Changes in mining technology created boom towns over night. (they could disappear just as quickly)

6.  Substantial finds caused investors and companies to employ more experienced miners from Europe, Latin America, and China.  How do you suppose Native born miners reacted? ~ Miner’s Taxes ~Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

7.  Currency issues  Native Americans  Environment

8.  Texas Longhorns roamed free in the years following the Civil War.  Railroads opened eastern markets for cattlemen.  A series of unfortunate events caused the closing of the cattle frontier.

9.  The government tried to increase interest in farming on the Great Plains by offering: 160 acres of public land free if a family agreed to settle on it for 5 years. 500,000 families took advantage of the offer. More than that had to buy their land (because the good public land went to the railroad companies) By 1900 - 2/3 of the homesteaders’ farms failed

10.  By Frederick Jackson Turner  “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”.  The frontier “fosters social and political democracy” by breaking down class distinctions.

11.  Wyatt Earp Wyatt Earp

12.  Broke up the individual tribes  47 million acres were distributed to Native Americans. The best lands were sold to white developers  Ghost Dance movement: last ditch effort by the Native Americans to resist U.S. domination. 200 Native Americans were killed at Wounded Knee

13.  “Economically, it will ever remain true, that the government is best which governs least. The wants of a people are the sole proper, the sole possible, motives for production. Nothing can be substituted for them. Anything that seems to take their place is merely a debasement of them. The interests of producers, whether laborers or capitalists, secure, better than any other possible means, gratification of such wants.”

14.  Laissez-faire, low wages for workers, and government incentives encouraged business growth.  However, the South remained mostly farm land and poor.

16.  Were formed to fight the middlemen and railroads  Established cooperatives